Officials in Berlin and Lower Saxony are looking into ways in which they can obtain genetic fingerprints of convicted football hooligans ahead of the World Cup finals, police said on Wednesday.
Legislation had been passed earlier which makes this possible. It is hoped that the new measures will make it easier to identify criminals if a crime has been committed.
Hamburg's Interior Minister, Udo Nagel, is also said to be interested in following such a policy.
"It is an interesting concept which is worth thinking about," he said, adding that his department was looking into the possibility of it happening before the finals on June 9 to July 9.
His Lower Saxony counterpart, Uwe Schunemann said that he believed it would be possible to take genetic fingerprints from convicted hooligans.
"We believe it can be done and if it is possible, we will immediately do it," he said.
There are some 700 to 800 known hooligans on the vicious offenders list in Lower Saxony, while Berlin has more than 1,000. But it is questionable whether all of them could be forced to give a genetic fingerprint.
The German parliament lowered the judicial hurdles which allowed officials to take a genetic fingerprint in November last year.
"The new rules make it much easier to take genetic fingerprints," a spokesman for the Berlin police said. "We will want to make use of that."
Police investigators believe hooligans would stand fewer chances of escaping after criminal activities if their genetic fingerprints were in a data base.
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